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Re: Harlequin


> Jeff Dalton <jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk> wrote in message
> news:comp.lang.dylan.199907091617.RAA28699@todday.aiai.ed.ac.uk...
> >> There are lots
> >> of cool languages I'd be interested in learning and using -- but not
> >> sufficiently interested to install the Unix blight on my system.  I
> *know*
> >> I'm not the only person who thinks that way.  Most of my fellow
> development
> >> team members here, for example, think this way -- even the guy who is our
> >> Unix guy.
> 
> > Really?  The "Unix guy" wouldn't want to install "the Unix blight"
> > on his system?  What kind of "Unix guy" is that?
> 
> One who feels no need to inflict Unix on himself at home just because it is
> inflicted upon him at work.  (I was probably unclear as to the point that he
> didn't want to install Unix on his *home* system.)

I'd still say "What kind of `Unix guy' is that?".  You said "even
... our Unix guy".  Well, it's not very interesting that a "Unix
guy" who doesn't like Unix, doesn't like Unix; so why the "even"?

> My objection is to the plethora of software out there which is built under
> the theory that "cross-platform" means converting all other platforms to
> Unix.

I do not believe anyone has any such theory about what
"cross-platform" means.

There is, of course, software that that's Unix based and made
available for other platforms in ways that are awkward for
those platforms.  But a number of developers are working in
Unix, and often, given time and other constraints, that's the
best that they can reasonably do.

There's also a great deal of software that's for Windows that
they does not work at all under Unix.  (At best, some kind of
emulator might be able to handle it -- way of converting the
other platform to Windows.)

In fact, there seems to be more of that software than the other
kind.  Moreover, I suspect that making software feel natural
on both Unix and Windows will very often mean making it rather
Windows-like.  I am not trying to suggest that *you* will fail
to make software feel equally natural on both platforms -- I
just suspect that often it won't be.

(BTW, re the unnamed Unix C++ compilers that suck at tracking
standards, do you not see the irony of that, coming from the
Windows side?)

A move to make a Unix-based Dylan more Windows-friendly is likely,
I fear, to make it much worse from my point of view.

-- jd
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